Plymouth Argyle v Scunthorpe United

Saturday, October 3, 2009

Football League Championship

Plymouth Argyle :
Larrieu, Sawyer, Lowry, Chester, Gray, Duguid, Paterson (Clark 80), Fletcher, Mackie (Sheridan 90), Blake (Judge 49), Fallon.
Subs not used:
Letheren, Wright-Phillips, Barnes, Gow.

Scunthorpe United :
Lillis, Byrne, Jones (O'Connor), A.Wright, Togwell, Sparrow (Thompson 65), McCann (Woolford 64), J.Wright, Morris, Hayes, Hooper. Subs Slocombe, Spence, Canavan, Boyes.
Subs not used:

SULSESC REPORT

by Nick Haines at Home Park

THIS was a first. As far as I know, I was the only SULSESC member in the pub. Where was everybody? To be fair, I knew in advance that not many would turn up. You must all have known what would happen.

When I met my brother outside the ground, he’d managed to secure some free tickets, so cheers to the mystery blonde, whoever you are!

Before I got into the ground, I had a text from a friend inside telling me the team news, and that’s when I knew we’d get nothing from the game. Murphy was injured, so we had Lillis in goal. Mirfin was out too, so we had Byrne at centre back alongside Jones. The shock news was that Williams seemed to have picked up one of his mysterious sudden injuries (he'd been in the media the day before saying he was looking forward to playing), so we had Morris at left back, and Adkins dropped Spence for Andrew Wright. With an injury-ravaged back line, you have to pick the best of the rest, but we didn’t. We didn’t even have any width ahead of Morris and A. Wright, the full-backs. And this against a team that only has one tactic – putting in crosses for Rory Fallon. This had disaster written all over it.

And so it proved. Plymouth walked down both flanks unopposed and put in crosses for Fallon at will. Morris was forever getting caught out of position, and A. Wright was having a nightmare, looking well out of depth at this level. Rob Jones had one of his good days, and heroically won almost everything Plymouth tossed in the box, and when Fallon did get the better of him just before half-time, Lillis produced an acrobatic fingertip save.

In the second half, it was more of the same, only this time a high cross from the left found Fallon’s head and Lillis was beaten. 1-0 down to the bottom team, and it could have been much worse.

Adkins got his team selection badly wrong, but after the goal he made a much-needed change. Woolford and Thompson replaced the pedestrian Sparrow and McCann, and suddenly we had some width, and what a difference it made. We started to play at last and create chances of our own, and were making Plymouth look like the poor side they are. Woolford drew a clumsy foul from Larrieu in the Plymouth goal, and we had a penalty. Hooper sent the keeper the wrong way from the spot to put us back in the game.

But this is Scunthorpe, and on a bad day, so we might have known what would happen next. Just moments later, we gave away a penalty ourselves. Some flat-footed defending let Alan Judge race unmarked into the area and Lillis brought him down. Judge turned executioner and beat Lillis from the spot, and we were behind again. Only this time there was no way back.

After the game, Adkins blamed the defeat on Jones being off the pitch for treatment when Plymouth scored their second. There may be something in that, as Jones had been our one good defender. In practice, though, had Plymouth been anything but a bottom-of-the-table side, they’d have won the game long before then. This game was lost in the team selection, with poor full-backs and no width. Most of our fans were unhappy at the end, and rightly so. Personally, I applauded the team off the pitch. It wasn’t the players who had cost us the points here, it was the manager. We could have picked a team capable of beating Plymouth, but we didn’t. We were awful. Still, it was a long way from home, hardly anyone will notice….